With his high cheekbones, sunken cheeks and aquiline nose, Peter Cushing is without a doubt one of the most striking and iconic faces in horror film history. Combining his elegant physical appearance with his calm and well-spoken manner, Cushing has often been described as “the gentleman of horror”. As a lifelong Peter Cushing fan, I would certainly agree with that appellation, as I think he brought a certain kind of inherent class and quality to every role he played, whether it was a horror part or not.
My earliest memories of seeing a Peter Cushing movie go back to the late 1960s, when I first saw him in the Hammer horror movies that I grew to love so much. As a little boy staying up late to watch Scaredy Date every Monday night at 10:30pm, I was instantly struck by this fantastic British actor with a captivating face, a man who could play Baron Frankenstein or Dracula’s archenemy, Dr. Van Helsing. with equal charm and charisma. In those far-off days, I had to be content with an old black-and-white television, so seeing Mr. Cushing in that context was exciting enough in itself. But then when we finally got our color television in 1975, and I got to see all those wonderful Hammer horror movies in glorious Technicolor, well, that was an even greater joy than my initial exposure to them on my old black, and -! Set in white back in the sixties!
It wasn’t just the Hammer movies that I loved Mr. Cushing in, as he made some great appearances in the Amicus movies as well. Amicus were Hammer’s main rivals when it came to producing the best quality horror films, and my favorite role for Cushing in these trunk films was as the tragic former garbage man Arthur Grimsdyke in Tales from the Crypt (1972), who is hounded to suicide by the ruthless actions of a snooty neighbor, who objects to Grimsdyke’s way of befriending local children and harboring dogs in his house, picking dirt off of what, after After all, it’s just a simple case of a lonely and harmless old man playing a nice uncle to the local kids. This is undoubtedly one of Cushing’s best roles, and I really felt sorry for Mr. Grimsdyke when his tormentor finally leads the poor old man to hang himself. But of course, this being a Cushing horror movie, and one in which the character has been fiddling with a Ouija board, it didn’t all end there, as a year later Grimsdyke’s rotting corpse rises from the grave. to exact ghastly revenge on his ruthless neighbor, ripping out his heart and leaving it for his shocked father to find the next morning, wrapped in a blood-soaked cloth with a Valentine poem written in blood. Classic Amicus stuff!
Along with all of his Hammer films, the Cushing Amicus films hold a special place on my DVD shelf. Whenever I look at my DVD collection, I often think that when I used to see Peter in all those fantastically creepy movies years ago, I never thought that one day I would have them all in this format, always there to watch. whenever you want
It wasn’t often that Peter Cushing played a bad guy, but when he did, he could really impress, just as unforgettably as when he played the parts of gentlemen. The movie that shows Mr. Cushing at his most ruthless and nasty is, to me, the 1969 classic. Frankenstein must be destroyed. In fact, of all the Frankenstein movies he’s starred in, this is the one that truly portrays the Baron at his darkest, lowering himself into such shocking acts as rape and murder. He blackmails a young couple into helping him with his ever fanatical experiments, and when the girl, Anna (played by the lovely Veronica Carlson), inadvertently sets the monster free, he kills her with a knife in cold blood. Along with the tragic image of poor Mr. Arthur Grimsdyke hanging by the neck in Tales from the Cryptthe scene where poor Anna is lying dead with Frankenstein’s scalpel sticking out of her stomach in Frankenstein must be destroyed it certainly ranks high on my list of Cushing movies that have the most shock value.
Of course, everyone knows that Peter Cushing played many other roles outside of the horror genre, and has appeared in countless stage productions playing literary characters such as Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. Oh yeah, and who could forget his occasional guest appearances on The Morecambe and Wise Show, where he persistently harassed the two comedians for their “money”. However, it is for his amazing performances as Baron Frankenstein and Abraham Van Helsing, along with all of his other horror roles, that I will primarily remember him. He made those parts his own, just as his great friend Christopher Lee did with Dracula and Boris Karloff did with Frankenstein’s Monster, and no one, but no one, could fill his shoes in that regard.
Today’s horror film industry is sadly a much poorer place without Peter Cushing, the “knight of horror.”